These Are The Best Fake Game Consoles Over The Past Few Decades

There are bootlegs in every aspect of this world, and gaming is no exception. There’s a large market where you can get knock-offs and fakes, no matter if its earnest handheld devices resembling the real thing or consoles packed with more than 1000 games that look like the controllers of the original systems. And in this article, let’s go through some of the worst bootlegs in the world of gaming over the past few decades.

Pong clones

Console cloning has existed since the 1970s and 1980s, and the successful Pong homeport from Atari was actually cloned from a basic ping-pong game featured in Magnavox Odyssey’s lineup. But without some research, most people didn’t know which came out first.

And though Magnavox Odyssey sued Atari for Pong, which ended up with a settlement and Atari, in fact, took the idea and released even better, more refined versions of the game, the market for home consoles witnessed a lot of “Pong” machines and some of the first fake consoles. For example, in Russia, there was the “Tournament” Pong console while in Spain, there was Overkal Pong console from Inter Electronica S.A.

Many bootleg manufacturers were interested in Pong consoles and took advantage of the original design from Magnavox Odyssey and the original Pong home console from Atari. Also, those similar consoles kept the same internals of older ones and packed them in newer external enclosures to resell with the promise of improved performance and better graphics.

Power Player Super Joy III

This is among the most brazen video game fakes you have ever seen, with a ridiculous amount of games included in one device that looked nothing like a legitimate product. However, it offered a good performance enough to exist on the market.

Its controller resembles a Nintendo 64 one but came with a 6-button, 9-pin controller resembling a Sega Genesis gamepad. Besides, it’s also packed with a realistic light gun that takes after a Walther PPK. This product offers 76,000 titles on board like Clu Clu Land, Super Mario, and Duck Hunt. The system can boot up as well as work reliably using component cables while the light gun is functional though it’s really clicky.

PolyStation

This one looked almost the same as the real products, and while it played awful games, it was capable of fooling others. This bootleg did a good job of mimicking the original packaging of the PlayStation and the shape of PSone.

And while it couldn’t play PlayStation titles and was classified as “Famiclone,” it succeeded with aesthetic, but that’s all.

There are various iterations of the PolyStation, such as those resembling PlayStation 2 and 3 as well as newer models. Not only the external hardware, but the system is also pretty close to the real product, for untrained eyes at least. This product, which is made in China, has been sold in many markets across the globe. Notably, none of the PolyStation variants can play titles other than the 8-bit era.

Other bootlegs

Apart from the three we mentioned above, there have been other bootleg consoles released over the years.

For instance, the OneStation is a handheld console created to mimic Game Boy Advance iterations. Notably, it even had special cartridges of its own to play various games. There were multiple “multicarts,” including SNES and NES titles included on each. The manufacturer even made a special adapter allowing the console to use MD MAX cartridges, which transformed it into a Mega Drive ROM station.

Another bootleg is JungleTac, with plans on its packaging and customer-facing site to offer digital TV options, an SD card reader, MP3 Player, GPS, etc. it was good enough to play games at Game Boy Advance level.

And then we have the Mini Game Anniversary Edition which capitalized on gamers that look for a sold-out NES Classic Edition. Made in China, its box art and controllers are created to mimic the original NES. But the NES controller ports and Reset and Power and Reset buttons are swapped.